What you need to know to reach English fluency
At some point, every English student is going to ask themselves – “How long will it take for me to reach fluency?” The answer most teachers give is, “It depends” – But, I hate that answer. Of course it depends, everything depends on something. It’s correct, but it’s just so unhelpful. So, in this article, I will try to explain exactly how long it takes for a learner to achieve fluency, along with some methods you can use to reach fluency faster.
Learning a skill is never a short or easy process – especially if it’s a skill worth learning. The more valuable the skill, the more difficult the process, and it can be easy to get lost on the way towards mastery if you’re not sure what steps to take.
Why do people give up when learning how to paint? Is it because they lost interest in being a painter? Probably not. Similarly- do language learners give up on the skill because they lost interest in language, or no longer see a benefit of being bilingual? Unlikely. Instead, it’s usually the case that learners give up when they feel like they’ll never reach their goal – fluency.
So, how do we solve this? By understanding what English is made of, you’ll find it easier to track your improvements, fix your mistakes, and see progress. In other words, you’ll make fluency an achievable goal.
We will first discuss the skills that comprise English, along with some of the ones you might be skipping. Then, we will figure out how to identify your English level, and how to track your progress. Finally, we will cover some of the changes you can make to your learning regimen that will help take you to the next level, and eventually, fluency. Despite what you might’ve heard, it’s pretty easy to figure out when you’ll reach fluency if you have the right tools.
Remember: The speed at which you reach fluency is determined by the methods you use to learn a language, and the time you invest every day. So, by the end of this article, you should be familiar with the best methods to learn, and the best ways to spend your study time.
To figure out how long it’ll take to reach fluency, we must understand what fluency is made of. In this empirical linguistics study, it is determined that English is made up of four macro skills (speaking, listening, writing, reading), and many other micro skills (including grammar, vocabulary, spelling, pronunciation). Each macro includes many micro skills, and a weakness in one micro skill might cause problems for your overall fluency. Spelling, for example, is a micro skill of writing. If you can write proficiently, but your spelling is mediocre, your writings won’t be taken nearly as seriously.
If we look at the four main skills that comprise English – Speaking, Listening, Writing, and Reading – we can split them into two categories. These categories are production (where we produce, or create, words and ideas in English) and reception (where we receive, or understand, words and ideas that are told to us in English).
This concept of dividing skills into different categories originated with the Constructivist learning theory. This theory states that learning does not happen just through passive listening, but also by active participation and work. In other words, a learner must learn to produce AND receive if they want to become a master.
What makes language such a unique skill?
One must also understand, not just what English is made of, but also how it differs from other skills. Imagine that you are learning how to build furniture. You might attend woodshop classes, or watch YouTube tutorials, but in the end, you can become an expert at the skill without the help of another person.
But English is a little different. Since language is a tool of communication, you will need partners to practice communicating with! Having no partners in language studies is like asking someone to become a coder without giving them a computer. Ask yourself, will you improve faster by studying alone, or by speaking with others in a fully English setting? Understanding this difference between learning a language and learning a standard skill will help guide your methods of practicing.
So, your study regimen should accommodate this need for active communication. The more we progress into virtual education, the harder this can be to find, but you must try to find a way to actively speak if you want to reach fluency. Whether it be through language immersion classes, or any other method you can find to practice your speech, it is necessary. If you forget to include this type of challenge in your studies, you will certainly find yourself unprepared in the situations where you really need your English skills.
How do we measure fluency?
The current standard for measuring a students’ English level is the CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages) grading structure. This is the A1-C2 structure most students are familiar with. To put it simply, A students are beginners, B students are intermediate, and C students are advanced – You’ve probably heard this before.
Beginners can understand familiar topics, such as work, hobbies, entertainment, etc, and can respond with basic statements. Intermediate students can understand most new topics, and respond with more complex, semi-spontaneous statements. Advanced students can understand almost any topic, regardless of complexity, and respond with spontaneous answers. These responses also use common English phrasing, such as expressions, idioms, and phrasal verbs. For a more in-depth explanation of each level, I recommend the following simplified level description page. I recommend you l, so that you can notice when you make big improvements.
According to the CEFR grading structure, we can also differentiate these levels by an average amount of time invested. But, remember, these are active learning hours – a combination of both reception and production, as we learned before. If we follow this chart, we can see that an improvement in level usually comes after 200-300 hours of active learning hours.
Factors that can affect your learning speed
This measurement in necessary hours invested per level can be affected by a few different factors. It’ll take you longer to progress through each level if you’re not using the language in active situations, as we saw with the Constructivist learning theory. Another factor to keep in mind is how related your language is to English. A Spanish speaker studying English will need to spend far less time with root words, suffixes, etc than a Mandarin speaker learning English, because the two languages both have a basis in Latin and Greek. It’s the same reason why an Italian speaker might find it easier to learn French than Vietnamese.
You can, and should, use this information to guide your studies. For example, if you’re a Spanish speaker learning English, you might need to spend less time than students of other languages studying Latin root words. Instead, you can study how the words you’re familiar with change when used in English instead of Spanish. For example, the change from “enserio” to “serious”, or “departamento” to “department”. Studying these patterns is a great way to speed up your language acquisition, and you’ll see improvements when you practice speaking.
How close is your native language to English?
To identify how related your language is to English, the Foreign Service Institute (FSI) has a category system that you can use. In this system, Category 1 contains the languages closest to English, and Category 5 are the least closely related. Spanish, Romanian, French, and Italian are all examples of Category 1 languages. These are languages with similar origins, such as Latin and Greek. On the other side are Arabic, Japanese, Mandarin and Korean, which are all Category 5. In general, it will take category 5 students about twice as long to learn English than a category 1 student.
While there are many factors that might affect the time you need to become fluent in English, the CEFR structure and FSI systems good ways of getting a rough estimate. If you’re a Spanish speaker learning English, you can see that other students in your position usually take about 1000-1200 of active learning hours to become fluent. It’s possible to get there faster, but you will need to really focus and challenge yourself.
What separates intermediate and advanced students?
Now that we understand the average time it will take a student to learn English, we can look at some of the skills that separate beginner, intermediate, and advanced students. By looking at this CEFR grading rubric (here’s the Spanish version), we can see that there are five different grading categories. These categories are Listening, Reading, Spoken Interaction, Spoken Production, and Writing. To clarify, “spoken interaction” refers to your ability to hold and continue a conversation. “Spoken production” refers to your ability to make complex sentences and arguments while speaking.
It’s very valuable for English learners to look over this rubric and examine some of the key differences between the levels, so that they’ll know when they’ve progressed, and where they need improvement.
When looking at the ‘Spoken Interaction’ category in this rubric we can see that a B1 level student can “enter unprepared into conversation on topics that are familiar, of personal interest or pertinent to everyday life (e.g. family, hobbies, work, travel and current events)”. But, a C2 level student can “take part effortlessly in any conversation or discussion and have a good familiarity with idiomatic expressions and colloquialisms.” You can use these statements to guide and test your own education. Ask yourself honestly, can you participate in ANY conversation or discussion and be able to respond with idioms and expressions? If the answer is no, you should try to figure out why. Perhaps you need to improve your fluency, or maybe you just need to learn and practice more expressions. If you truly ask yourself, you’ll know where you’re falling short.
A common mistake with the CEFR levels
Many students who use CEFR structure believe that reaching a B2 level in English means you are B2 in all skills. If we refer back to the grading rubric, we can see that there are five different grading categories. You can be a B2 speaker, while still being an A2 writer. This is significant, because it means you can be significantly lacking in one skill without realizing. And, nobody will correct you on this failure (unless you have an English instructor) – You must do so yourself. Because, if you choose not to address your weaknesses, you will continually fail without realizing, until you’ve failed so much that you give up on improvement entirely.
Imagine, for example, that you’ve just acquired a C1 level English certification. Now, you’ll have access to a plethora of new positions in the workforce, and you begin applying, confident that your speaking ability matches your newly acquired level. And perhaps it does! But what if your writing skill is still lagging behind in the A2 range? Your emails to prospective employers will appear informal, child-like, and perhaps even rude. Never underestimate how a weakness you chose not to address might undermine you in the future.
This phenomenon is more common than you might realize. Many shy students have excellent comprehension skills, yet lack matching speaking skills. This is because they didn’t challenge themselves to speak (or produce) enough in previous learning environments – a problem that catches up to them sooner than they might hope for. So, be careful not to let yourself fall behind in some skills while you progress in others – It is a common problem that can lead to significant hindrances in your language journey, and cause you to spend more time backtracking than you might like.
What should you do to reach fluency quickly?
Let’s go back to that CEFR estimate for the time it will take to reach fluency. Remember, they say that an average student will take between 1000 and 1200 hours to become fluent. But, if you’re reading this, you probably don’t want to be an average English learner. So, below, we’ll discuss some tips and changes you can use to improve your speed of learning. Some are obvious, some aren’t so obvious, but all will be useful in helping you reach fluency. Because, if that’s your goal, wouldn’t you like to reach it faster?
Perhaps the most important step to take when trying to learn faster is to identify your motivation. This doesn’t mean passively assuming English will somehow benefit you – Because, if your goals aren’t clearly defined, you’ll have a harder time envisioning their results. And if you don’t really know what you’re working for, what’s going to motivate you when things get tough?
Motivation for learning a language can be divided into two categories – Instrumental, and integrative. Integrative language learners wish to become fluent so that they can assimilate and integrate into a culture. For example, an American learning Arabic because of their passion for the various Middle-Eastern cultures would have integrative motivation. An instrumental language learner, on the other hand, is learning a language because it will directly benefit them somehow, such as in getting a higher paying job.
The most common example of instrumental motivation would be learning English to find a higher paying job. But, we can find an integrative motivation here as well – the desire to communicate better, and fit in with natives in your workplace. At the moment, you might only be able to identify instrumental motivation reasons for learning English. But, having a combination of both integrative and instrumental motivations is important. If you’re an English learner and you become demotivated by the job market, for example, you might still be motivated by the idea of having access to English media and culture.
With that in mind, I recommend you sit down and spend some time thinking about your own instrumental and integrative motivations. Write them down, and be very specific. By writing them down, you now have an explicit goal, and you’ll know if you fail or succeed.
An example of a motivation list:
Instrumental motivationsI want to become C1 level in English so that I can find a job in America.
I want to improve my accent so that people never misunderstand what I say.
Integrative motivationsI want to learn English so that I can better understand American sarcasm and comedy.
I want to learn English because I enjoy learning about American history.
Of course, your motivations will probably be different, and that’s alright. As long as you have them written down and in a place where you’ll see them, you’ll stay focused to achieve them, which will in turn push you to study harder and more efficiently.
Another step you can take to ensure you’re learning as fast as possible would be to target your weak points. A mistake I see far too often in language learning is the choice to completely ignore certain skills, or at the very least to not give them the attention they deserve. Remember – You can have different levels in different skills of English, but if the gap becomes too wide, you’ll find it nearly impossible to progress. The most common ignored skill is usually writing, because students don’t see a real value in practicing it. After all, if a student is learning English to find a new job, will they really need writing skills?
Don’t forget survivorship bias
Let’s look at a historical anecdote. In World War 2, Allied engineers were trying to figure out what parts of their planes to put more armor on. They saw that many of the planes returning from battle had bullet holes near the fuselage, so they immediately thought to place more armor along it. Until, one engineer realized something important: These planes had all returned home, alive. Meaning, the engineers shouldn’t be looking at the spots on these planes with holes, but instead at the places that don’t have holes, because planes shot in those spots didn’t survive.
📷The first use of “survivorship bias”
This phenomenon is now known as “Survivorship Bias”, and can be applied to any form of education. You might be learning to speak and have conversations, constantly feeling bad that you aren’t fluent yet. But this is because you’re trying to fix a problem (sub-fluency in speaking) without addressing the real cause. In other words, you’re trying to put armor on the places that don’t need it, while leaving the vulnerable spots wide open. If you’re a B2 in speaking, but an A2 in writing, you should try to understand exactly how this inability to write at a high level is impacting the rest of your English career. Because, a weakness in one language skill will ALWAYS impact your strength in other skills.
And don’t be afraid to challenge yourself! Production (speaking and writing) is certainly the hardest part of practicing any language, and humans only learn when they’re put in situations where they’re challenged. If your study regiment is easy, then you’re doing something wrong. Which do you think will be more productive: an hour of looking over flash cards, or an hour of speaking in a live setting? Well, practice speaking for a thousand hours and you’ll be fluent. Practice flashcards for a thousand hours, and you’ll know lots of vocabulary – but which is more important? Always remember that the more you challenge yourself, the faster you will learn, and the faster you will reach fluency.
To finish my recommendations for improving your learning speed, I recommend creating a schedule to plan and track the hours you spend studying. If you take our English classes, try tracking the hours you practice, and schedule some private study time to review the material we learn. By scheduling an exact hour for studying, you’re much more likely to follow through and get it done. This’ll also help you make sure you’re getting enough hours of practice every week, because you might realize you’re not studying for nearly long enough.
Try setting an hourly amount of practice you want every week. For example, you might want to study for ten hours a week – a standard schedule.. Well, you can divide the hours by the amount of days you want to study per week, and you’ll have your schedule. Just remember, there is a difference between studying for 6 hours in 1 day vs studying 2 hours over 3 days. Education is not a sprint, but a marathon.
Now that you know exactly what English is composed of, you’ll know which skills you’re skipping, and why skipping them is such a problem for your education.
And, you’ll know how fluency is defined, which will help you identify your own improvements as the months of study pass by. It’s important to know when you improve, after all!
Perhaps most importantly, you’ll also now know some of the improvements you could make to your study methods to ensure you reach fluency as fast as possible. Take this information, along with the English level rubric, and apply it to your education! I promise, if you follow the lessons taught here, you’ll see improvement faster than ever before.
I hope you enjoyed this new style of blog post! We will also be recording and posting a video to accompany this. As you continue your English and language education, you might find yourself discouraged, or lost at times. Hopefully, this article helps guide you on your path to fluency.
